Idyll in the Parking Lot & Epic in the Food Court
by Pontmercesque
Summary: A modern day story. Faced with rigid mall police, embittered eyeliner wearing rivals, a slew of disgruntled food court employees and her own beloved father, will poor Cosette ever be united with the love of her life?
1. The Happiness of a Young Girl

(Just so everyone's clear: taking this seriously may cause permanent damage to your faith in humanity.)

_The Idyll in the Parking Lot and the Epic in the Third-Story Food Court_

_Introduction: The Happiness of a Young Girl_

The mall: nothing brought Cosette more joy than seeing that towering brick complex appear on the horizon. She would squirm in her seat and her chattering would increase in pitch while her papa frowned intently at the road ahead. All teenaged girls loved the mall, but it meant something more to Cosette. It meant a respite from the monotony of her life; it meant freedom. The house she shared with her papa was quiet and secluded. She was home-schooled, and she didn't have any friends her age. But when she was at the mall she could watch the other girls who swarmed by in every direction, taking note of their hair and clothes and accessories. She could talk with store clerks about perfume and the weather. She could imagine herself at a slumber party surrounded by friends or eating ice cream in the passenger seat of her boyfriend's car. Things suddenly became possible.

"You'll call to check in with me in two hours?"

"Yes, Papa," Cosette answered distantly. She was watching the girls who crowded around the entrance with cigarettes in hand.

"And whenever you want to come home, just let me know?"

"Yes, Papa."

"Alright," he said, having run out of reasons to stall. "Have fun, my dear." He surreptitiously slipped a few bills into her handbag.

Cosette bounded gleefully toward the revolving doors, pausing but briefly to look at the familiar sign taped to the glass. It displayed the grainy black-and-white photo of a man, under which the words were printed:

24601

CAUGHT SHOPLIFTING

DO NOT ALLOW INSIDE

IF SIGHTED, REPORT IMMEDIATELY

Copies of this notice were posted throughout the mall. Cosette felt peculiar each time she saw the man's sad expression, almost familiar to her, but she shrugged it off as a cute pair of sandals caught her eye.

* * *

We have said that all teenaged girls loved the mall, but we must amend this statement. There were those who experienced quite the opposite of Cosette's euphoria. It wasn't that they lacked a love of joy and liberty; but for these unhappy girls, such things were not to be found at the mall. Observe, a dark and noisy alcove looming ominously beside the sunny food court. Inside, you will find one such girl, for whom the mall represents drudgery and an endless barrage of emotional torment. The dark place is Hot Topic, and this girl is the cashier.

The manager approached, slim, pale and sneering. "Make yourself useful, won't you?" he growled. "That is, unless you'd rather go and work over _there_." He gestured toward the store across the way, whose dimly lit entryway the girl had just been staring into. Flustered, she immediately snapped her attention back to the powdered face of her superior. How could she be caught gazing at Abercrombie & Fitch – again?

"And turn that shit down," the manager added before returning to his duties.

"But this is _my song_!" the girl groaned, casting another glance at the far-off shop display.

* * *

Cosette, too, found herself enamoured with that particular spot in the mall. She, however, did not hesitate to enter and rarely could she resist browsing their selection of jeans. Oh, she had always liked the store, indeed, but only in the last few months had it acquired a special meaning for her; the reason she was continually drawn to this spot, why she continued to journey to the mall at all.

For Cosette had fallen in love for the first time in all her fifteen years.

He was not like the other Abercrombie models. Oh, sure, he was nude and indolent as the rest, but Cosette knew there was something essentially different within his soul. He had none of the arrogance that the others exuded. His blue eyes (monochromatic in the photograph, of course, but in Cosette's mind they were a bright indigo) betrayed sensitivity, innocence. She even thought she could sense a shyness, which made sense to her; what kind of person could avoid feeling slightly embarrassed by inflated images of their exposed flesh being distributed across the country? Yes, the faintest blush seemed to grace his smooth cheek, mirroring the one that came to Cosette when she saw the way his dark curls lingered just above his shoulder, as if they were as desperate as she to reach out and touch.

Now Cosette spent as much time outside the store as in, because His picture graced the entryway, and it was better to gaze at him than to pass him by.

Presently, she heard the unmistakable whirring of a scooter. Oh no! It was that mall cop with the muttonchops, come to yell at her for loitering again! She lovingly looked back one more time before scurrying along to buy a smoothie and calm her nerves.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Cosette, she was being watched from the parallel corner of the food court. How could she have realized that as she sipped her smoothie a young man's entire world was crumbling to dust and rebuilding itself again?

"Marius? Alright there?"

"Uh." The boy spun around on his stool and faced his friend, who was working behind the counter. "Sure. Yeah. Look, I should go check in at the hotel, my room is probably ready. Call me when you're done with work, okay?" And without waiting for an adequate response, Marius disappeared, heart pounding.

Thus, we begin our tale.


	2. Marius Arrives

_Chapter One: Marius Arrives_

"Alright, then, sir," the clerk said, dripping saccharine, "it looks like you're all–hey, there! And where have you been?"

"Um. Work?" The girl rolled her eyes. She'd barely entered the building, and already she was being yelled at!

"Oh, sure, waste your time catering to the hormonal mire of the masses while we're struggling to do our customers an honest service. We'd do anything for our guests, of course," the thin man said, casting a pointed friendly look at the man opposite the reception desk before turning back to the object of his disdain. "Well, now that you've decided to turn up, why don't you show this gentleman to his room? Come on now, don't just stand there, help the gentleman with his luggage!"

But the girl hadn't been listening since she'd caught her first glimpse of the guest's face. She knew him. She'd known him all too well, and now he was here, standing before her in full color, breathing, blinking, frowning in confusion. "Miss?" She thought she could hear his voice through her hazy thoughts. It was lighter than she might have imagined, higher in pitch. Why, he sounded so gentle! He must have been an intellectual, well-bred, all of that.

"Excuse me, sir. You! Girl! Are you going to show the gentleman to his room, or aren't you? You know, it's about time you started feeding your own damned self–pardon my language, sir, it's so hard to get things through to the poor girl." Her irate father thrust the man's room key directly under her nose, successfully breaking her train of thought. She immediately bit her dry lower lip, lifted the man's suitcase, and said as softly as possible, "Yeah. Come right this way."

Eponine trembled all through her routine check of the guest's room. He stood awkwardly aside, watching her.

"I'm very sorry for the inconvenience downstairs," she attempted miserably. "I wasn't trying to be rude."

The boy looked surprised. "What was that?" he asked vaguely.

Eponine smiled despite herself. "Nevermind, you're doing the exact same thing," she said lightly. She shushed the quiet voice inside that speculated on the cause of his distraction. "But at least your father isn't hanging around to yell at you for it."

Something flashed in the boy's dreamy eyes, and Eponine knew that she'd caught his complete attention. Still he feigned nonchalance. "That man was your father?" he inquired offhandedly. Eponine felt a jolt at the sound of his voice. _So soft and lyrical_, she thought. _So correct and polite, I'd almost say _nerdy_, yet so right!_ And she made a mental note to write down that rhyme before she forgot it. Finally, she remembered to answer. She jerked her eyes away and began to pace around the cramped floor space.

"That's right, sir. He owns the place. He's always mad at me, you know, because he thinks I should be spending more time at home, looking after the family business or whatever, 'cause I'm the oldest and everything." She sat abruptly on the springy bed. "It's like he just doesn't get why I need to work. I do, you know, I need to work. I mean if he paid me anything decent then maybe–_maybe_ then I'd work here, though probably not, because I see enough of his face as it is. But I work at the mall, even though it sucks, and I earn my own salary and buy my own things, and then he gets mad at me for it. It's crazy."

The boy had looked on the brink of protesting throughout this monologue, but now he paused, mouth still agape. "Did you say you worked at the mall? The one about twenty minutes north of here?"

"I thought you weren't from around here! How'd you know that?"

The boy blushed, for some reason, and nearly answered, then covered his mouth and cleared his throat instead. "Ah, well," he said at length, "I should be, you know, getting settled in. Unpacking my things."

Eponine leapt up. She'd been sitting on this customer's bed, chattering away at him, like a lunatic! She grimaced dramatically. And it couldn't just be any customer, either; it had to be _him_…! "I'm so, so, so sorry, sir," she said hurriedly.

"Not at all," he answered, detached.

"I'll be going. If you need anything, just call! Have a nice stay!" she cried. But as she was leaving, he happened to turn his back, and she gripped the handle of his suitcase to read the luggage tag.

She pursed her lips throughout the solitary elevator ride downstairs. Slouched against the mirrored wall, she pulled out her poetry journal and scrawled the boy's telephone number and home address on the inside cover, before she could forget. But her thoughts lay with her suddenly sensitized lips. Now she knew his name, and it was far too wonderful, far too special to speak aloud.

_Marius!_


	3. Friends of the ABC

_Chapter Two: A Group Which Probably Should Not Have Become Historic_

If anything had been unusual about his reception at the hotel, Marius had scarcely noticed. He scarcely noticed anything, in fact. Rather than unpacking, the instant he was alone, he threw himself onto the bed (there was a metallic groan and a resounding thump). He felt embarrassed, all of a sudden. One image dominated all his thoughts: the girl he had seen at the mall. Who was she? Had she seen him watching her? That would be awful; but to think that she had never looked at him, was not even aware that he existed, was a thousand times worse.

He needed to find out who she was. He needed to find her. But then, what could such a glorious creature want with him? She had been alone, but that didn't necessarily mean she was unattached. Maybe her boyfriend had just gone to get a drink somewhere else. Or maybe she was already married, and had a perfect little child – it was hard to determine her age from such a distance. Come to that, maybe she wasn't even in high school yet! But no, Marius; we mustn't get ahead of ourselves. First, we find her; then we scruple.

The sun had nearly set outside by the time his phone rang, pulling him from his reveries. He was tempted to ignore it, or answer with a stinging reprimand, but he saw that the caller was his friend Courfeyrac, whom, after all, he was supposed to be visiting.

"Marius!" his friend cried. "Come on. I'm in the parking lot. There are some people I want you to meet."

Marius was quite sure he didn't want to meet any people, and especially not people who Courfeyrac wanted him to meet, but he agreed to go along anyway.

He paid little attention during the drive. He broke the silence only once, abruptly. "Courfeyrac?" he asked.

"Mm?"

"What would you do if you fell madly in love with a girl, I mean, madly in love, you were ready to marry her, in fact you had already begun looking at engagement rings, and then you found out that she was eleven?"

Courfeyrac choked. "Oh dear, Pontmercy, what have you gotten yourself into?"

"Nothing!" Marius was turning red. "This is a hypothetical situation. Alright, forget the marriage part. Just say you really liked her. What would you do?"

"Ah. I would – this is all conditional, of course, that is to say – it's not as if I'd know from personal experience, but I – I think – I think it would be bad," he finished lamely.

Marius bit his lip nervously. The silence resumed.

"Here we are!" Courfeyrac announced at length. Marius peered out the window. His face fell.

"The mall?" he asked, in mild disbelief. "Isn't this where you just came from?"

"Sort of," Courfeyrac replied, no less cheerful. "Actually, see that café there? On the street? That's where were going."

What Courfeyrac called a café was actually labeled 'Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar'. Marius had no idea why his friend chose to style it thus, but he followed along nonetheless. The interior was cramped and dimly lit. Courfeyrac stepped ahead of him, nodding at the hostess, who obviously knew him, because he went straight to the back of the restaurant and entered a private room, separated by a sliding paper door.

Marius was taken aback by the tumult he encountered within. The room was crammed to the corners with young men, and no less than five separate conversations (and one drunken drone which seemed to be involved in all of them and none) were flying every which way. "Welcome," Courfeyrac whispered dramatically, "to the Society."

Thus Marius was introduced to Enjolras, Combeferre, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bahorel, Lesgle, Joly, and Grantaire (though it took him much longer to remember all of their names). He learned that they did indeed form a society of sorts, which called itself the Friends of the ABC. "ABC?" he repeated, in a sceptical aside to Courfeyrac.

"It sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? But that's what we want you to think."

"Alright, then, what does it stand for?"

"Who said it stood for anything?" he snapped. But he could not help smiling, and proudly, he continued, "ABC: _Angry, Bitter Cashiers_."

Marius regarded him blankly. "Angry, Bitter Cashiers? You don't mean – you don't all work at the mall, do you?"

"Surely you don't think we'd all have come together under any other circumstance? No, we're the lowest of the low – the underdogs, the scum of the food court. We can't all be paid to look pretty, you know." Marius blushed.

Left of Marius, a slightly older man who might have looked like a hippie if he tried harder – this was Bahorel – was gruffly decrying the foolish system of _management_ and _rules_. "And who gives a fuck (Marius winced) what I do with the receipts anyway? No one gives a fuck about receipts. People don't want receipts; they walk away and throw them in the bin. I may as well do it for them. Receipts are fucking useless. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Stop it. There are children around," someone else scolded, though not entirely without amusement; it was unclear to whom he was referring. "And what did receipts do to you today?"

Bahorel grimaced. He pulled a half-wadded length of receipts from his pocket. "They were stuck to my shoe when I walked out. Fucking disgusting. How could the floor possibly be that greasy? I work in a fucking ice cream shop!"

Marius (who had begun to ignore this conversation, finding the other man's speech extremely disagreeable) suddenly snapped to attention. "I'm sorry. Were you saying – is that receipt from Ben & Jerry's?" Bahorel nodded. Marius rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, seeming to reflect for a moment. Then he turned to Courfeyrac. "And what time did I go to visit you at work?" he asked.

"About one-thirty, I think."

Marius smiled amiably at Bahorel. "May I see that?" he asked, hoping to sound as casual as he could. Bahorel, who had no idea what to make of this, shrugged silently and handed it over. Marius waited for conversation to pick up again around him, then unfolded the receipt and began scanning its contents.

There it was: 1:48 pm, a small raspberry smoothie. His heart leapt. But not a moment later, alas, it shattered again.

The girl had paid in cash. There was no code, no credit card number, certainly no signature. He was no closer to finding out who she was than he had been before.


	4. Marius in Mourning

Chapter Three: Marius in Mourning

The next few days were surreal for young Marius. While from second to second, minute to minute, time seemed to slow to an impossible rate – and once he actually thought he saw the minute hand halt in its course and turn backward – at night, as he lay in bed reflecting on the day's events, everything became a blur. He rose early and dressed all in black. He had for a long time preferred dark colours for personal reasons, but now he had found another; somehow, it made him feel slightly closer to the one who now constantly occupied his thoughts: the girl in black.

This habit of his had an unfortunate side-effect: Eponine, the manager's daughter, had identified in him a sort of kindred spirit. She had taken personal charge of tidying his room and would enter at the most inconvenient hours, chattering away as (with great unease) he performed his ablutions, bringing up a plethora of artists whom Marius, who had never been much interested in music, had never heard of.

During the day he would go to the mall, making the rounds of the food court to visit Courfeyrac and his friends. Courfeyrac showed no small embarrassment at this, apologising incessantly and insisting that Marius find a more amusing way to spend his vacation, but Marius was equally insistent that he was enjoying himself. Every day he would visit Ben & Jerry's and order a raspberry smoothie, chatting with Bahorel – who really was an excellent fellow – and discreetly leaving a rather significant tip. One day, however, he had started a bit early and found Feuilly, a comrade-in-arms who worked the shift before Bahorel, at the till. When Marius tried to leave his habitual tip, Feuilly barked at him, "What do you take me for? I don't want your charity!" Marius withdrew, so shaken that he forgot to take his smoothie. He retired early that night.

He rarely encountered Eponine, which was just as well for him; he tended instinctively to avoid the pit of gloom where she was living out her days. But he had another, more compelling reason for staying away; directly opposite Hot Topic he had discovered his own image plastered across the wall, and passing it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Eponine, however, had noticed him returning to the mall, day after day, and at length proposed a carpool. Marius politely declined.

And thus in a short time his life had fallen into this rhythm: he spent his days in the mall, he attended the meetings of the ABC in the evening. He would have been content, at least as much as he ever had been, but for one thing: the girl in black did not return. He began to doubt. What if it had been a one-time thing? What if she had been a visitor from out of town, just like himself? He despaired at the thought. But no! He had to keep hoping. It was all he had left.

He called and cancelled his return flight. "I like it here," he told Courfeyrac, "and I haven't got anywhere else to be."


End file.
